Reaching Hearts Through Music and Words

Anxiety

I’ve mentioned in past posts that I suffer from anxiety. There are so many things that I seem to not be able to do because of this illness but how has it affected my mothering? In some ways it has made me a better mother because of how deeply I think about everything. I think deep deep thoughts much of the day and take my role of mothering very seriously. Yet I fall short. As most people do.

There are many illnesses that mothers can go through. Anxiety is just one of the many. Parenting with an illness or handicap is quite common. Life is unpredictable and suffering can be around any corner. We live in a fallen world, tainted by sin and sicknesses. I’ve met mothers with vertigo, some with depression, some in a wheelchair, some with hormonal issues, autoimmune diseases, I even know one young mother with cancer.

So why is it that I feel so ashamed about this anxiety? Maybe because it is a silent illness that from looking at me you cannot tell. Most people who know me closely say I have a calm demeanor, an easy going personality and am bubbly and joyful. Which I am all of those things. The effect of anxiety on me is completely internal and mostly, cannot be seen with your eyes.

Phew…that was a long list of crazy things going on inside my body. I don’t feel all of these things all of the time. They come and go. Some never completely go. And I never can tell when I’m going to have a panic episode but I do know that I when I get overloaded with stress, even just normal everyday stress, this is when the symptoms worsen. I have chosen to live a simple, gentle life with not too many other activities going on besides the primary care of my family.

This was never meant to be a ‘woe is me’ type blog post but I thought that there may be other mothers and fathers out there with anxiety who could benefit from somebody taking about it.

If you are misunderstood I know exactly how you feel. Anxiety has been my ‘Achilles heel’, in which I can only seem to get so far in life before anxiety pulls me back like a chain upon my legs. Impatient people cannot handle me, as I pull out of things at the last minute. All. The. Time. I have been given labels like ‘unreliable’ and ‘full of excuses.’ (mostly by myself).

The Lord may heal and deliver me from this one day and I have grown stronger as I’ve gotten older. I no longer have the phobias and fears as extremely as I did as a child. But until that day I will fight this battle called anxiety.

Of course, there are many things that anxiety has not stopped me from doing and I am determined to keep going, keep trying, keep dreaming big, keep praising my saviour and keep on trying to be the best wife and mother I can be. Thankfully the Lord is full of grace and compassion and my sweet husband is too.

Thankfully the Lord gave me the most gentle and patient man on earth to be my husband!

I always appreciate it when bloggers and YouTubers are honest and share from their hearts so I thought I would be honest with my readers about my struggles as well as the things in my life that I’m super proud of.

Thanks for reading!

Don’t forget to leave a comment, I read each one and reply when I can. Let me know if you would like more blog post chats about anxiety or hear about my current natural remedies to heal my nervous system.

Blessings, Peta xo

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Hi all my lovely readers. Wow it’s been a busy couple of months for me. End of school year craziness, Christmas, and 6 weeks of summer school holidays. I don’t actually like business. I know many who thrive off it. My personality type screams for peace, quiet and slow. Otherwise my head gets cluttered and I have a tendency to get overwhelmed, brain fog and shut down a little. However I am slowly learning how to cope when life gets busy – I just keep rolling and don’t give into the stress and hope that a quieter time is around the corner when I can think…and write. Daily rituals that I have embedded into my life in recent years have helped me to cope better with stress too such as cups of tea, walking in nature, talking regularly and deeply with my husband, lists, daily prayer and journaling.

We got back from a lovely holiday 6 days ago. We were very blessed to have the opportunity to stay in my uncle and auntie’s holiday house which happens to be right at the most popular sea side location in the city! Luke and I vlogged one day of our holiday where we caught the tram which goes from the coast all the way into the city. We had a great family day out while we walked to the museum, mall and a guitar shop. Luke edits and does all the graphic design for our Youtube channel, he is very talented in this area!

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Here is part two of our story. We went from having a full on ‘it’s homeschooling or nothing’ mentality to sending our children to public school and eventually finding peace.

We were all prepared for homeschooling at the beginning of this year. (2017) I had ordered all the curriculum we needed, shopped for supplies like lead pencils and notebooks and had made up a schedule that looked doable.

I had been feeling a bit stressed with the children home all summer holidays though. It does seem to get to me a bit after a while. All the mess, demands, questions and sibling squabbles that go on when all the children are home at the same time for a long period of time.

Other parents I knew COULDN’T WAIT for their children to get back to school

…and I guess I can understand why. Don’t get me wrong, I love my children so much and love being around them and spending time with them. It is a true blessing and privilege to be given children by God and I do enjoy caring for them. But sometimes I do need a bit of quiet to catch my breath and perhaps think a clear thought.

Also one of my children has some very intense moods, and that, has always made homeschooling very challenging. He reacts in anger and when he’s in one of his ‘moods’ the whole household suffers.

By the fourth week of term one I was not very well. I became so stressed that it pushed my nervous system completely out of whack. I was in bed for days and couldn’t function properly. I guess I had some sort of nervous breakdown, I’m not really sure what to call it. My shoulders were so tight and painful, my pupils constantly dilating and in ‘flight or fight’ mode, and my body wouldn’t stop trembling. I was so wound up and began taking it out on my children by snapping and screeching at every little move they made. This triggered off my anxiety that I also suffer from. I saw doctors and a psychologist. I was put on medication, which I only took for a month because of the awful side effects. I did a lot of research and dove into some natural remedies and a herbal supplement regime instead. I was in bed for days and didn’t go out anywhere for weeks. It took me a few months to fully recover.

While this was going one Luke and I made the decision to send them to school.

It was clear that the pressure of homeschooling really got to me, and to him as well.

We did a lot of prayer, discussion and wrote up pages of notes on the weight of our decision. It became pretty clear that school was the right move to make. Our first choice was a private Christian school 25 minutes away in a nearby rural city. However it was sadly beyond our budget. Our second choice was a small local public primary school only a few minutes away from our house.

We are really happy with this school. It has small classroom sizes and a good behaviour management system. It seems to care a lot about each individual student. Being close to home means the boys feel secure that mum and dad aren’t far away and has made the drop off and pick up doable.

The first couple of weeks were hard. The boys didn’t really want to go and all the packing of backpacks, lunchboxes and buckling everyone in the car took some getting used to!

It was hard emotionally as well. I felt like a failure.

Was it really happening that homeschooling was not working out yet again!? Why can’t I be like other parents who make one decision for school and stick to it? Will my children recover from the roller-coaster ride of being pulled in and out of school? I felt lost for a few months and didn’t quite know what to do with my time during the day when I was usually homeschooling. Even though I still had 3 little girls at home to care for.

I knew I needed something to take my mind off the two boys being in school so I began a project of setting up a veggie patch in our backyard. Something I had wanted to do for ages but just hadn’t had the time for while I was homeschooling.

As the year rolled along I began to see how the Lord has used this situation for good.

Many positive things have happened through us sending our kids to school. – I have began getting out in the local community more and actually meeting other mums from this town. I have been taking the younger three to playgroup – something I couldn’t do while homeschooling and I have had the opportunity to witness to other mums.

I now get excited about all the new opportunities that our children are having at school like doing a swimming carnival and being involved in a musical. The boys are now thriving, have made friends and have both won respect for learning awards. I like doing other ‘regular school mum’ things like watching my children swim at the school lessons and seeing all the creative things they have made. The little crafts they made me for mothers day was so cute – I’ve never had that before because they have always been homeschooling during mothers day. Just little things like that make me smile.

My nervous system is so much better. The pressure of managing their education is off and I can just be mum instead of teacher. I no longer feel wound up and am better able to deal with stress. I have noticed that I am enjoying my boys so much more because I have a break from them during the day . When I see them at 3:10pm I get excited and can’t wait to hear about what they’ve been up to. I am well rested and a calmer, better mother than I was before. Having a rest during the day charges me up for a full on evening of homework, after school activities, dinner and bedtimes. I have been able to give the younger ones more focused attention too.

I have replaced worry with prayer.

Everyday I get up and pray for the Lords protection over them physically and spiritually as they go off to school. I pray for their salvation and pray for the Lord to lead them out of any temptations. It has bought me deep joy to see the boys being a witness for Christ in the classroom. They have given their classmates gospel tracts, Super Book DVDs, and spoken to others about Jesus numerous times.

We have nightly discussions about what the children at school do and say and how we, as Christians are to behave different. For the first time in their lives they are hearing swearing and atheist concepts like evolution. However, it gives us a chance for us to explain to them what the truth is and for them to see how unbelievers think and behave. They’re seeing for themselves how lost and hurting many people in this world are.

I’m now actually looking forward to having three children in school next year. As miss Savannah joins them for her first year of school. God is using our family for good in this community and in our local school. I’m excited about this next chapter of our lives. I know they will be okay – they are in the Lord’s hands.

It’s possible that we may try homeschooling again in the future if we feel like it’s the right thing to do. But not for now and not next year either. We will assess at the beginning of each year what the education path will be for each of our children individually.

How about you? How do you deal with the stress of homeschooling?

Have you sent your children from homeschooling to public school?

Are you plagued with guilt and fear from sending your children to school or have you also found peace?

May God bless you as you press on with the challenging and important role of parenting your precious children.

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I can’t remember where I first heard of the idea. But this advice is gold! And the Lord has really blessed our family through this.

Once a week my husband Luke and I have a meeting with each other.

We meet once a week after the children are tucked into bed and have a full on ‘business’ type meeting with each other. The laptops and phones are put away (unless we need to research something together) and over a cup of tea we discuss everything we can fit in before bedtime.

I have a special A4 sized lined notebook that I use to keep a record of everything we discuss and highlight important things we need to remember.

As each of our five children have come along we have been able to talk to each other as a couple less and less. While the children are awake they have a way (as most children do) to interrupt every conversation we try and have. Every time Luke or I open our mouths to speak to one another someone seems to need us to fix something/comfort them/listen to them/help them/break up an argument over a toy/clean an urgent mess. So our meeting together is vital for keeping us talking to each other about things.

Because lack of communication is a silent killer of marriages.

Some topics are icky and don’t want to be discussed. But they need to be. We try and talk about the tricky and stressful things (like insurance and sick kids) as well as our dreamy and exciting things like holidays and future dreams.

Also, as someone who suffers from anxiety I really benefit from getting all that stuff out that is swirling around and around in my head. The 10000 things that I feel I have to organise/should be doing/haven’t got around to yet are spoken out in the open, made sense of and written down on paper. It calms my mind and eases the stress. Solutions are found and the world begins to look a little brighter.

Our meetings together have turned into something we both look forward too. When the mood is low in our house due to business and stress it really helps our moods to be lifted and gives us hope, clarity and direction as a couple.